


for I mean to conquer Troy

by Katbelle



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Also because drama happens in a courtroom, Angst, Best Friends, Courtroom Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, Misunderstandings, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Serious Injuries, Sort of because there's a closing argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5417624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katbelle/pseuds/Katbelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>People for some reason are hesitant to hire a lawyer named Foggy.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>His name is the only thing Matt contributes to the partnership. That's the motif, his motif. And it shouldn't be like this, it should never be like this, he'll fix it, he will, <em>he will</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for I mean to conquer Troy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prettybirdy979](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettybirdy979/gifts).



> The request given me was based on [this kinkmeme prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/5006.html?thread=10063758#cmt10063758).

**for I mean to conquer Troy**

_Some friend must now, perforce,_  
_Go forth and bid my boy_  
_To saddle me my wooden horse,_  
_For I mean to conquer Troy.  
_ Wallace Tripp

***

(introduction)

"I hear congratulations are in order."

Marci drums her fingers on her glass, her — no doubt perfectly manicured — nails clicking against it. She shakes her head, just the tiniest motion that he's not sure she's even aware of, and he can't hear her hair brush the collar of her shirt. She has her hair pinned up, then, which means she came here straight from work.

"You heard right," she says. A note of smugness, but earned. Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz. There wasn't a better place for her to land at. Except maybe for Stark Industries' legal department, but as far as he knew, they weren't hiring.

"She also got calls from Goodman, Kurtzberg and Holliway," Foggy supplies. Proudly. Pride. Mhm. He's proud of her and it can be heard in his voice. They've given dating another — third, it was a third one, but it's not like Matt's keeping track, oh no — chance after the fall of Landman and Zack, but it didn't work out. _Again._ Marci and Foggy... They wanted different things. Different was good, usually — like him and Foggy, they were different but in the 'we compliment each other' way — but there was different and then there was _too different_.

Karen and Foggy, though. Karen and Foggy would work. It would be... It would be good, for them both.

"Why not them?" he asks, honestly curious.

Nothing against Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz, the recent Shlottman fiasco aside. They were a big law firm, and while their usual technique wasn't as cutthroat as Landman and Zack's, they had a stellar record, Jeryn Hogarth especially. Never lost a case, to Matt's knowledge. And the Shlottman fiasco cannot be counted as one as it never went to trial.

Marci shrugs. "Mallory Book made associate there. I don't think I'd be able to see her every day and _not_ succumb to the urge to punch her."

Foggy hums in agreement and Matt nods, full of sympathy and understanding. Mallory Book. He doesn't know her well — fine, he doesn't know her _at all_ right now, but he also didn't know her well back at Columbia. He had one group project with her in their second year (didn't go that bad, all things considered), and never interacted with her afterwards. She kept in vastly different circles than him. She was more Elektra's acquaintance than his, and then Elektra... 

And then Elektra.

Point is, he didn't know her and he still doesn't know her, but he knows that Marci hates her, for some reason, and that Foggy dislikes her — partially because Marci hates her, partially because of something Mallory Book did to him personally — and so Matt nods, full of sympathy and understanding. Maybe it's not fair, disliking someone you don't know by virtue of someone else's dislike, but. But then. Matt could count the number of friends that he has using one hand and he'd still have fingers left. Marci is his friend — at least he considers her one, would like to, at the very least — and he'd rather stick by her than go on a useless defence rant of a person he doesn't know and doesn't want to know.

He could, if he was feeling contrary. But he doesn't.

And Mallory Book could be every bit as awful as Marci and Foggy claimed her to be.

"Why don't you go private?" he asks instead. "Open your own practice, like we did? What? Afraid you'd have to compete with us?"

"Let me enumerate the reasons," Marci says. She extends her middle finger, flipping him off and counting out at the same time. He'd love to laugh or smile, but he can't, because Matt Murdock is not supposed to know what she did. "One, I'd prefer not to starve."

Foggy swipes at her hand, batting it away. "He can't see it, you know that," he tells her, and the lie sounds convincing. "It's not as funny when your target doesn't know."

There's an opportunity. Maybe he will get to smile after all. "Doesn't know what?"

"It's even less funny when you have to narrate it," Marci sighs, but she puts her hand down. So there will be no laughing after all. "Second reason, being heartless feels nicer when it's done in a group. That's why the meanest people at schools always stick together."

"Then find yourself a partner," Foggy says. "There's got to be someone you know that hasn't been shipped off to jail yet."

"Well, there's Kirsten."

"See?" Foggy waves a hand at her. "Stahl and whatever this Kirsten's surname is. Partners at law. Complimenting each other's strengths and helping out with the weaknesses."

Marci tips her head back, just an inch. Oh. He knows this one. She raised a brow, she always does it when she raises a brow. "Like you and Murdock?" she asks and sounds too dubious for Matt's taste. Why is she doubting this? 

There are people who look at Matt — at Matt Murdock, who seems to radiate self-confidence, who has a flair for dramatics and a sometimes flamboyant style in a courtroom — then look at Foggy, and think prudent to ask Matt, _why are you partners with that other guy?_

 _Why the hell is he partners with_ me _I will never get_ , Matt wants to reply. And did, once, to great bafflement of his conversation partner. They didn't get it. They've only ever seen the surface of Matt Murdock, they never glimpsed the jaded and broken dark pieces of him lurking beneath and didn't understand how woefully inadequate he was next to Foggy.

"Of course," Matt tells Marci, perhaps a bit harsher than strictly necessary. "Foggy's a brilliant litigator with an encyclopedic knowledge of case law. And I'm--"

He stops, because. Because. Nothing comes to mind. What are his strengths, professionally? Talking, mostly, but he doesn't even do a lot of that. Pointed silences are his thing. So what does he bring into this partnership?

"While Matt is brilliant at closing statements." Foggy snaps his fingers. "He can spin a speech just like that, off the top of his head. You've seen him in moots, so you know it's true."

Marci snorts. "Oh please," she says, "half of our graduating class could do that. No offence, Murdock, but Foggy is a much better lawyer than you."

"Hey!" Foggy bristles, evidently offended on Matt's behalf.

Matt just shrugs. _He_ isn't offended, not in the least. It's true, what Marci said. He knows it's true. And she knows that he knows. The only person not to accept it is Foggy, who doesn't think of himself nearly as well as he should, which is a sad state of affairs.

"The only reason you," Marci points a perfectly manicured finger at Foggy, "are partners with him," points to Matt, "is because people for some reason are hesitant to hire a lawyer named _Foggy_. You need him for his name."

"Ha ha," Foggy mutters, "very funny."

It's not at all funny, because it sounds plausible.

And because Foggy doesn't correct her.

 

(one)

Funny, _that_.

 

(two)

"It could have been my real name," Foggy says a few hours later, after they've said their goodbyes to Marci and he walked Matt home. "'Foggy', I could be named 'Foggy'. Could have been, if my parents were weird hippies."

Matt laughs. "But you aren't named 'Foggy'," he points out. "It's just a nickname that you insist on using."

"I happen to like that nickname, thank you very much."

Matt elbows him in the side. "Then I guess you'll be stuck with me as your partner, if you keep that up."

Matt waits for the _I'll be stuck with you anyway_ or the _there are fates worse than that_ or even the _for better or worse_ that usually follows such teasing, but it doesn't come.

Instead Foggy elbows him back and says, "oh yeah, poor me."

At least it sounds like a joke.

"Get some sleep," Foggy tells him as they stand in front of the door to Matt's apartment building. It could be considered romantic, by connoisseurs of romantic comedies. In reality, it's not. Few things are the way romantic comedies paint them. "We have a client meeting scheduled for eight o'clock sharp tomorrow."

Andrea Liotta, yes. He remembers. So he smiles. "See you in the morning," he tells Foggy and slips inside.

 

(three)

He doesn't sleep that night. In fact, he doesn't even make it to the meeting with Andrea Liotta.

He wasn't planning on going out that night. He's just come back from a bar, he's had a few drinks, and while he wasn't drunk, he was tipsy and not as coordinated as he'd like, or as he'd need. He wasn't going to put on the suit and go out. Contrary to what Foggy thought, he didn't actively want to die. It's not like he had a death wish. Sure, if it happened, it happened, it wouldn't be too much of a loss. He'd get what has been coming for him for a long time. But he didn't go out there in search of death.

It's just... There was a mugging, happening right under his window. He couldn't _not_ step in. And then that mugging turned into a brawl into a proper fight, and suddenly there were more people than he could keep track of while halfway to drunk and he--

It didn't end well.

So at eight o'clock - instead of sitting in his conference room, listening to why Andrea Liotta showed up on their doorstep in search of a lawyer - he is lying in his bed with Claire grumbling over his head, something about bleeding and unconscious idiots that keep asking for her help.

"It's half past eight," Claire says once she's done with the stitches and has put the bandage on Matt's side. "I've been on call till half past seven, I'm tired and need to go home. This," she motions at Matt's body, "is nice to look at, but I'm not going to babysit you. Call your friend."

"He's at work," Matt replies. Where he should be as well. He tries to sit up and hisses in pain, and Claire pushes him back onto the mattress. "He'll be furious."

"He should be. You almost got yourself killed, _again_. I don't know why I have to be the one who keeps bringing this up, but you need to be more careful. Next time I might not be fast enough to stitch the holes in your body before you bleed out on your floor."

Matt smiles crookedly. "You've been right on time so far."

"Well, there might be a first. And in this case the first will also be the last, so please, Matt."

"I'll try," he tells her.

It's a lie. He won't try. It never occurs to him to try before something bad happens, precaution is always an afterthought, a reaction rather than an instinct. Self-preservation has never been a strength of his.

Foggy will be so mad.

 

(four)

Foggy shakes his head. "I'm not mad," he tells Matt, quiet, so that Karen won't hear. His heart beats _truth_ and he sounds so very, very disappointed.

 

(five)

He takes notice of the new development at the office on Friday. Of course it's a Friday. _Of course_. The last day before the weekend, one that should be happy if only because you don't have to go in to work the very next.

He had plans for the weekend. He was going to meet with Foggy and waste their time off on trash films which were made bearable only by Foggy's narration of them. He was going to order pizza from that place Foggy liked. It was--It was going to be---

Old times. Just like old times.

Foggy's not at the office when Matt comes in, late, as almost every day this week. It's been... It's been a tough and tiring time. Six people have gone missing in the past three weeks, and while the police is so far treating it as unrelated, the word on the street — which Matt's been gathering every night this week, painstakingly — is that it's the work of the same perpetrator.

He's been late most mornings. Just like he's late today, and by the time he gets to the office, Foggy has already left, to see Andrea Liotta and her... Hmm. Her something. It's her cousin. Is it her cousin? The client?

He's fairly certain it's a cousin.

Someone knocks on the door and comes in after hearing Karen's invite. "Franklin Nelson, Esquire?"

Matt frowns. _Franklin_ Nelson? "I'm authorised to sign for him," Karen says, sweet and polite, as usual. Not surprised, not at all.

For the first three months of knowing Foggy, Matt didn't know his full name. He assumed 'Foggy' was a nickname — though wasn't certain, after meeting Rainbow and Sunset in high school he was certain of _nothing_ — but he didn't know Foggy was named Franklin.

No one knew that. Foggy didn't like his name, claimed it sounded way too dead-president-y for his taste and therefore he preferred to go by his hippie nickname. He always introduced himself as 'Foggy Nelson', and so Matt introduced him as 'Foggy' when they first met with Karen at the precinct.

Matt stands up abruptly and walks out of the office. Weighing his options, he decides to go with, "did I just hear 'Franklin'?"

He did. Which is the point. "Mhm," Karen hums. "Papers for the Anselmo case, we've been waiting for them for a couple of days. Foggy got sick of it, called the county clerk's on Wednesday and yelled at them. They must have got scared of him, which is good, because now we have them."

She shakes the thick envelope she's holding. "But Franklin?" Matt asks.

Foggy hates that name.

Karen laughs. "You do know it _is_ his name, right?"

 

(six)

The cigars Foggy keeps giving Bess must be amazingly good, because Brett keeps calling them from the precinct.

Not for all cases, of course. Just the truly interesting ones, since they have enough clients coming in without Brett's help and their current roster of pending cases is beginning to get crammed.

But for the interesting ones, they make an exception.

Like this one. Man, thirty-one, shot and killed four people at a bank. Claims someone else was controlling his actions. Mind-control they had a few months back, it was all over the news. And now they have body-control. Apparently.

It has 'interesting' all over it, and Matt wants to find out if the man truly is innocent.

"Mr. Abbott," Foggy says after Brett lets them into the interrogation room, "my name's Franklin Nelson, and this is my partner, Matt Murdock. May we sit down?"

Steve Abbott nods, so Matt and Foggy take their seats. Foggy engages Steve Abbott in a conversation; Matt answers questions posed him automatically, almost without conscious thought.

If he could, he'd be staring at Foggy, not their prospective client — who's telling the truth, by the way, about his actions being controlled and about not being able to stop his hand from picking up the gun nor his finger from pulling the trigger. 

It's not interesting anymore.

If Matt could, he'd be staring at Foggy, confused, worried, and if he could, maybe he would see past Foggy's so often faked and strained cheerfulness, and maybe he could see what the problem was so that he could _fix it_ (oh _God_ he needed needed _needed_ to fix it), and maybe he would find an answer to _what is going on_.

 

(seven)

"Franklin," Matt says, out of the blue, startling Foggy enough for him to have his hand slip and touch the burning-hot handle of the cooking pot.

Foggy hisses in pain and snatches his hand away, turns on the tap and sticks his hand under the stream of ice cold water. Matt winces, half in sympathy, half out of guilt, he wasn't aiming for that reaction, he didn't want this to happen.

He wasn't aiming for anything. "Sorry," he says, and his quiet apology gets swallowed up by the sound of water hitting the metal of Foggy's sink.

"What was that?" Foggy asks as he's turning the water off. He shakes the residue off his hand rather than towel it, he must have burnt it worse than Matt thought, if it hurts too much to have cloth touch it. "You only ever full-name me when something's _really_ bad. Are you dying or something?"

Foggy says the last part as a joke, but Matt's expression must be particularly odd, because Foggy's heartbeat spikes in fear. "Oh _God_ , you're not, are you?"

Matt lets out a shaky laugh. "No, I'm not. To the best of my knowledge," he adds.

"I'll take that," Foggy says. "So what was the Franklin-ing me about?"

"Nothing. Just--Franklin?" Foggy splays his hands helplessly, clearly not understanding what Matt's issue is. "Earlier, at the precinct. You introduced yourself as Franklin Nelson."

Foggy nods. "Last time I checked that _was_ my name."

"But you hate that name," Matt points out, pouting. Childish move. It's just... He doesn't _get it_. "You always use 'Foggy'."

"Which is an amazing nickname, but one that doesn't exactly inspire trust in my skills." Foggy sighs. "In case it somehow escaped your notice, buddy, we're running a serious business now. 'Franklin' sounds like a much more professional guy than 'Foggy', doesn't he?"

_People for some reason are hesitant to hire a lawyer named Foggy._

"He does," Matt agrees.

 

(interlude)

"This isn't working," Foggy says.

He's sitting behind his desk. It's dark, both in the office and outside, the street lamps below don't provide enough light to illuminate the room. Foggy's whole face is hidden in the shadows and Matt cannot see it, and Matt doesn't know what he looks like right now.

He sounds grim, his tone took on that of an undertaker.

"Don't say that," Matt asks quietly. He's thumbing a card that he snatched off the desk — Foggy's new business card, all posh and proper, paper of good quality. His fingers run across the typed text, and it's enough that he feels the indents of it, he knows what it says even without looking, but he _does_ look at it, just to be sure.

_Franklin Nelson, Attorney at Law_

"You're never here, Matt," Foggy continues. "You have your Daredevil business, it eats up both your time _and_ your focus. I don't even need both hands to count your billable hours this week."

"That's not true."

"The Anselmo case? We've lost it. I'm sorry... _You've_ lost it, the one case you had while I was handling most of the caseload."

"I didn't even know we've taken it."

Foggy laughs. "Which is the point, here. You're not reliable, Matt, you come and you go, or you don't come at all, the clients complain... You're a liability."

Matt fiddles with the business card, keeps his head lowered and doesn't utter a single word. No point. No point in rebuttals or arguing. It's true, oh God, it's so true. All of it. And then some. Even if he were reliable, even if he were the kind of partner that Foggy deserved and signed up for, he'd still be a liability. Any day could be the day the police bursts through their door and comes to arrest him, any day could be the day Matt destroys his life and the lives of everyone he holds dear, everyone he loves — and that's not a whole lot of people — and drags them down right with him.

"I can't do this anymore," Foggy says, "not with you. I can't take care of the firm and of you. I need a break. I need a partner that helps and supports me, not one that is more trouble than he's worth. That's why you need to leave."

"Don't say that," Matt pleads.

God, God, please don't say that, Matt'll fix it, he broke it and he'll fix it, he will he will _he will_.

Foggy reaches out across the desk and plucks the business card from Matt's hands. The letters on it are black like the hole in Matt's heart, and the text cuts like the sharp and broken pieces of _himself_ that he cannot fix.

"I need you to leave," Foggy says, quiet and firm, and Nobu's knives hurt less than this, "because I don't need _you_ anymore."

 

(eight)

Matt wakes up with a gasp, and the moment he does, he can taste salt. He can _taste_ salt, right under his lips, oh, his pillow's wet.

He cried. He cried in his sleep. He cried in his sleep, like a _child_.

He runs a hand over his face. The last remnants of his dream - and it _was_ a dream, whatever _it_ was, he knows because he can still see in his dreams - are fading away, and the more he tries to capture them, the more he tries to remember what he was dreaming about, the more he forgets.

The alarm clock tells him it's 2:27 am. First night of proper sleep in days, he should relish that and not dwell on what no doubt was a stupid disturbing dream his subconscious cooked up for him.

He flips the pillow over and goes back to sleep.

When he wakes up again it's 7:30 am and he remembers nothing of the early morning interlude. 

The only thing that's left of it is the deeply lodged ache in his heart that stays with him for the rest of the day.

 

(nine)

Foggy has gone with Andrea Liotta to visit her brother in jail and prep him for tomorrow's hearing, leaving Matt at the office and working on the Anselmo appeal and Karen making calls for the Abbott case.

Days like this make Matt glad that Karen never went to law school. She's scary enough as it is, and if she had gone to law school, she would have got them out of business and took over the firm already. Karen Page, Attorney at Law. 

Or Nelson and Page, Attorneys at Law.

"I'm calling from the law office of Franklin Nelson," Karen says sweetly on the phone, twirling its ancient cable around her finger, "I'd like to set up a meeting--"

It still sounds weird, hearing Karen address Foggy as anything other than Foggy — and she's taken to doing that outside the professional context too, last week she went to Starbucks and ordered a coffee for 'Frank' and yesterday she's been asking _Franklin_ about his plans for the weekend. 

It started with an air of good-natured mockery, but it's been losing it. Today she called him 'Franklin' with the voice equivalent of a straight face.

"--listen there, you little shit," Karen hisses into the phone and Matt becomes aware that he spaced out and lost some vital part of the conversation. "I don't have the time for this. Mr. Nelson is a busy man, and so am I, for the record. You will _make_ time in your boss' calendar or we'll gladly inform the newspapers and the New York bar of how the office of Lannin and Dini is dodging responsibilities."

Matt tiptoes to his office door and sticks his head outside. Karen notices him and gives him half a wave before she catches herself and realises that he cannot see that. Or shouldn't be able to, but Karen doesn't know that.

She covers the phone with her hand and whispers, "the bank representatives. Fishy people." She lifts her hand and addresses the person on the other side of the call, "yes. Yes, tomorrow at nine will be perfect. Thank you very much."

She puts the receiver down. "Go to hell."

"Difficulties?"

She sighs. "Why can't all the secretaries and office managers be resourceful and agreeable and nice like I am?"

"Because then we wouldn't be so lucky to have you," Matt answers truthfully. "Office manager?"

Karen shrugs. "If you think I'm going to keep calling myself your secretary when it's in fact _me_ that is keeping this place running, you're dreaming."

"Fair point."

"So I gave myself a new job title. Franklin agrees."

And there it is again. "When did you and Foggy discuss it?"

"Last Thursday. You were home, sick," she supplies as a way of explaining why is it that Matt's been left out of that particular conversation. "Frank--"

Enough. "Why do you keep calling him that?"

"Helps with getting used to it. Plus, that's his name," Karen laughs. "Which you should know. You've known him for how long again...?"

"No, his name is Foggy," Matt states, adamant.

"When he's with _friends_. He's decided to go by his full name professionally, which I did thought was weird at first, but then he explained why." Matt raises a brow and Karen sighs. "He's been taking more and more cases, people actually _call_ about him, and you've gotta admit, 'Foggy Nelson' is not a name that inspires trust."

Bullshit. Matt's always found Foggy Nelson trustworthy, from the moment Foggy Nelson introduced himself and shook his hand on Matt's first day at Columbia. "When did you talk about _that_?"

"A month ago," Karen says. "You weren't here, Foggy said you needed a couple of days off. Personal matter."

It was probably that time he got shot and Claire told him not to even think about leaving the flat. Or that one time when some second-rate mobster almost slit his throat, which provoked a similar response from Claire. Or maybe even that Wednesday when--"Everything alright?"

Foggy drops his bag onto the floor and closes the front door behind him. Engrossed in trying to prove Karen wrong and that she was being unreasonable, enabling this weird behaviour from Foggy, Matt didn't hear him come in.

Karen scrambles to her feet and hands Foggy a folder. "I called Lannin's office and got his secretary to schedule a meeting for you tomorrow."

"Brilliant work," Foggy tells her warmly, fond and happy.

Matt finds himself smiling, despite himself. Foggy's good mood has always been infectious. "More like she threatened the secretary into scheduling that."

"Even better! Great job, Miss Office Manager!" Foggy high-fives Karen.

Matt clears his throat. "About that..."

Foggy hits Matt's arm with the folder. "You've done your homework, right?"

"What homework?"

"The documents for the Abbott case, I left them on your desk. We have to meet with Alex Lannin, which we're doing tomorrow, thanks to Karen. He represents the bank where the shooting took place, and they don't want to release the security camera footage from that day. So I need you to read up on them, as I'm afraid you'll have to verbally dismantle them. We both know that's your strong suit, not mine."

Foggy hits him again, and maybe Matt cannot see him, cannot see his face, but he _knows_ Foggy. So he knows that Foggy is smiling now, and he knows that things will be alright, eventually, because while Foggy might not need Matt — he will never need Matt, not like Matt needs _him_ , and _God_ does Matt need him — he _wants_ Matt nonetheless.

So Matt grins and says, "well, I've got to earn my keep somehow," to which Foggy laughs and drags him into a one-armed hug. And, really.

He's being paranoid.

All is fine in the world.

 

(ten)

Nothing is fine in the world.

 

(eleven)

He never makes it to the nine o'clock meeting with Alex Lannin.

At nine o'clock he's still lying on his now stained and battered couch, coughing up blood to the soundtrack of Claire telling him that this is it, that's the last straw, she's calling an ambulance, he needs to be in a hospital, she's not going to deal with a pulmonary edema here.

She does, in the end. Noncardiogenic is easier to deal with, and really, what else would you expect after being nearly drowned and sustaining a lung injury. It was... to be expected, in fact.

"You're so messed up."

Claire puts her stuff back into the bag and takes out a spare hoodie. The one she came in is — judging by the smell — covered in blood. Would attract too much attention if she were to be seen in it walking down the street. It's kind of horrifying, that he's glad she brought it and that that's the kind of thing she thinks about these days. But also uplifting.

"There's something very, very wrong with your head," she says. It tells him that she's rattled, that she's angry with him. Claire never gets this introspective about him unless pushed to her limit. "It's like you--"

"Have a death wish?" Matt asks weakly. She wouldn't be the first person to accuse him of that. As for there being something wrong with his head... If only there was _one_ thing wrong with his head.

Claire shakes her head. "I don't think you have a death wish," she says. "But I don't think you have a particular wish to live, either."

 

(twelve)

Foggy doesn't answer his calls.

Which is even worse than if he were angry.

 

(reprise)

"Matt, can I see you in my office?"

It's just after noon, Karen is out on her lunch break. Feeling like a schoolboy about to be scolded, Matt goes into Foggy's office and sits down opposite the desk from him. "I'm sorry about the meeting with Lannin," Matt blurts out.

"Are you alright?" Foggy asks. "Do you have any injuries that I should be concerned about and you don't want to inform me of?"

His lung's better, so Matt shakes his head 'no'. "I'm fine."

Foggy nods. He's silent for a moment and Matt thinks that this might be it, but no. "This isn't working," Foggy says, voice dark and grim, like an undertaker's. "I've, I've tried, but I can't. I can't do this anymore."

"Foggy..."

"I can't do your job on top of _my_ job, and I can't take care of everything _and_ find the time to worry about _you_. This isn't what I signed up for. You keep missing work--"

"Because of--because of the _other thing_ , you know it's--"

"I know it's important," Foggy hisses, "but so is our firm. What we do _here_. And you don't even know _what_ we're doing here."

"Of course I do," Matt bristles. "The trial of Andrea Liotta's father is wrapping up, the least court day is the day after tomorrow."

"Nice try," Foggy says. He rubs his temples. "Jesus. You don't even know who our client is. We're representing Andrea Liotta's younger sister, Carly. Or _I'm_ representing, it seems." Foggy takes a deep breath. "You're not reliable, Matt, not with the other thing eating up your time and focus. I can't trust you. I need to be able to trust you and I can't. We need a break. _You_ need a break, buddy." 

Don't say that, please don't say that, Matt'll fix it, he broke it and he'll fix it, he will he will _he will_.

He digs his nails into his palms, so hard that he's sure he broke skin and drew blood. He can smell copper in the air. Foggy reaches out across the desk and his fingers brush the back of Matt's curled fist, just the most fleeting of touches. "I need you, Matt," Foggy continues, "and you're never here."

 

(thirteen)

"Give me all the files we have on Carly Liotta," he tells Karen an hour later.

He's been--benched. No better word for that. If he were actually on any of the cases, Foggy'd have taken him off.

Foggy's been handling almost everything on his own lately. Between the disappearances and the drug lords killing each other, Matt's been so busy he didn't even notice. Didn't notice just how well Foggy's been doing on his own.

He didn't need Matt.

He's never needed Matt.

"They're typed, not in Braille," Karen tells him, but she does reach for their file cabinet and takes out a thick folder.

Matt takes it from her and puts in his bag. "I'll manage," he tells her with a smile so wide and so fake that it makes his cheeks hurt.

She doesn't question him on that. Which is amazing, because he's not in the mood for lying his way around what he's going to do. And what he's going to do is to try and touch-read all those printed pages, which will be difficult and a pain, but he needs to do that. He needs to prepare himself for the last day of the Carly Liotta trial and he needs to be there, to do his part and to be useful for _something_. He needs to prove that there _is_ something that he brings to this partnership, something other than his name, something other than fear and uncertainty and pain.

And if he does, maybe that'll remind Foggy that while he's never needed Matt, he did want him once.

 

(fourteen)

Something irks him from the moment he manages to read the first three pages in the Carly Liotta file and it takes him the whole of next day and reading all but two documents in the folder to pinpoint what that is.

The evidence against Carly has been planted, that much is obvious. No reasonable jury would find her guilty based of that. Even the prosecutor knows it, but for the lack of a better suspect she's going after the girl. 

Wrong. So, so wrong.

And, okay. Maybe Matt's been wrong too, about the case being about Andrea Liotta's cousin or father, but he was right about one thing: there was a male relative involved, and it was someone Foggy didn't know about.

Rudi Liotta, Andrea and Carly's uncle. A second-rate mobster that almost slit Matt's throat once.

Foggy Nelson and Matt Murdock, Attorneys at Law, had no way of knowing that Rudi Liotta was anything other than an honest but downtrodden car salesman.

But Daredevil, that was a different matter altogether.

Daredevil knew what kind of business Rudi Liotta engaged in off-books and behind his family's backs. Daredevil could nose around and find out why Rudi Liotta was allowing his niece to be set up and framed for murder.

 

(fifteen)

Five hours and a severe beatdown later he finds out that Rudi Liotta was doing nothing of the sort.

But Andrea was.

 

(sixteen)

He doesn't call Claire. Firstly, she's working the night shift tonight, wouldn't come even if he did. Secondly — and here Matt sucks in a breath and focuses on his body — nothing is broken, nothing is even cracked, he doesn't have any bleeding cuts or stab wounds.

He was just beaten with a baseball bat, but that's nothing, happens to the best of us.

He drags himself out of bed after spending the few hours lying sleepless in the dark, always, always in the dark, about everything. He ignores the pain in his side — he was beaten up, _of course_ it hurts, what else did you expect, you idiot — and grabs an apple on his way out. Hopefully this meager not-breakfast will combat the dizziness, no doubt the result of not having eaten anything in over twenty-four hours.

If he goes out now, he'll manage to get them coffee at Foggy's favourite hipster café before getting to court. Foggy would like that.

Foggy _does_ like that. "Cinnamon frappucino, mmm. Matt, you didn't have to," he says when Matt presents him with the cup. 

He probably means more than the coffee. "I did," Matt replies and he _definitely_ means more than the coffee. It's about so much more than the coffee, it's about being here, with Foggy, on the home stretch at least. "And I did my homework, too, this time."

"Glad to hear that, buddy." Foggy angles his head towards Matt, sticks out his chin. He's smiling. No, more than that; he's _beaming_.

Foggy turns to head towards the courtroom and Matt catches his arm, pulling him back. "There's something you need to know," he murmurs. "Andrea Liotta is framing her sister."

Foggy almost drops the coffee cup. "What?"

"She planned it," Matt tells him hastily, "the whole thing. She--she had--Martin killed. Stage--staged it."

"If she wants to have her sister convicted she's doing a crap job," Foggy murmurs. "It's evident that Carly is being framed." He cocks his head to the side and reaches out, wipes the sweat off Matt's forehead. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Matt forces out through gritted teeth.

Come on, Matty, you've gotta be. No bailing on Foggy, no more, and certainly not today.

 

(seventeen)

He realises, about three minutes into his closing argument, that he might have unintentionally lied to Foggy when he told him he was fine.

It's likely that he's the opposite of fine.

He's leaning on his cane — if it weren't for it, he'd have doubled over the second he got up. It's getting harder to breathe, is it the room? What's at fault? And his heart, God. His heart is not just _beating_ anymore, it's _hammering_ out an anxious and scared rhythm, a steady beat of failure failure _failure_.

"Members of the jury," he says, slower than usual, and Foggy no doubt thinks it's a tactic, something close to his trademark pointed silences, but it's not, it's not, it's just hard to breathe and hard to talk, "over the last couple of weeks you have been presented with many possible scenarios of what happened on the night of Paola Martin's death, you have been told of many possible suspects. But there's only one person on trial here: Carly Liotta. It is my job to represent her just like it is the prosecution's to prove their case against Carly Liotta. The defence is not obliged to prove anything, that burden lies on the prosecution. And you have to be satisfied with their proof, you have to be sure of Carly Liotta's guilt. You are the judges of fact; you must put aside any emotions and approach this in an analytical way. And if you think that what the defence says is or might be true, then the prosecution have failed in proving Carly Liotta's guilt."

Twelve steady heartbeats. Good. He nods at the jurors and smiles, sways a little and turns to go back to his seat.

"Matt...?" Foggy asks, quietly, but Matt can hear him, Matt can always hear him, even when he'd rather not.

He takes four whole steps before his knees give out on him and he collapses.

 

(eighteen)

"Oh my God, is he alright?"

"Someone call 911!"

"A step further and he'd have bashed his head on the table corner, did you see that?"

"If this is some delay tactic, Nelson, I swear to God..."

"I'm a doctor, let me through!"

"Matt, just hang on there, alright, please, Matt, please, please, _Matty_ , come on."

 

(nineteen)

He opens his eyes and is welcomed by darkness.

It says a lot about the state that he's in, the fact that he's momentarily taken aback — it's not supposed to be that way, is it? — before he remembers. Ah. Yes. Yes, it is supposed to be that way. It's his everyday normal.

It also takes him a moment to notice the second heartbeat in the room — a familiar one, this one he'd know anywhere, can never lose it — and the fact that his hand is being crushed in a too tight grip.

He smiles a little and squeezes Foggy's hand, then relishes Foggy jumping in his seat, startled awake. "Hi."

Foggy breathes out a relieved, "hey." He drops Matt's hand — Matt tries not to be disappointed, he's not _nine_ anymore — and reaches out to brush Matt's hair off his forehead. "Hey, Matt."

Matt licks his lips. They're dry and chapped. "What happened?"

"You collapsed in a courtroom, out cold," Foggy tells him and Matt has to close his eyes. Perfect. As if members of the New York bar didn't already think he was a special needs case. "One of the jurors turned out to be a trauma surgeon, he helped. We managed to get you to the hospital before..."

He cuts the sentence short. "Before what?" Matt prompts.

"Before you bled out," Foggy finishes. In the quiet of the room the words feel like a punch. "You were bleeding internally, Matt, you were _bleeding out_ the whole time and I _didn't know_."

"Hospital?"

Foggy nods. "Yeah. I nodded," he adds, and that betrays just how shocked he is. He's stopped narrating the things he knows Matt can sense, when it's just the two of them, but he slips back to the old habit when nervous. "I had to play dumb when they asked me about your injuries and spun a tale of how there are a lot of muggings on your block. You'll have to back me up on that, later."

"Thank you."

"This is fucking bullshit." Foggy shakes his head. "What happened, Matt? I saw--I saw you, your whole side is bruised."

"Rudi Liotta. Baseball bat. Had a disagreement."

Foggy drops his head so low that his forehead is touching the bare skin of Matt's arm. Matt wishes he had enough strength to move his other arm and card his fingers through Foggy's hair. "I can't do this anymore."

The jaded and broken pieces of him twist and dig into his heart, cutting deeper still. It's his fault, his own damn fault. _Please don't say that._

"You were bleeding out," Foggy repeats, "and you stopped breathing. Your heart stopped, Matt, and you were bleeding out, and I couldn't do anything about that. And I can't do it a third time. I can't have you almost die in my arms _again_."

He's not going to cry. God, fuck, no, he's not going to cry, he's not a child anymore, for fuck's sake, Matt, get a grip on yourself, this isn't the end of the world.

Just of yours.

"I can't take care of you," Foggy says. He moves his chair closer to the bed and leans over Matt, bent at an uncomfortable angle that his neck protests against with a crack, and graces Matt with the most bizarre horizontal half-hug. "I can't take care of you if you don't let me."

 

(twenty)

He's not a child and this isn't the end of the world.

Foggy's shirt gets damp and smells and tastes of salt, and the deeply lodged ache in Matt's chest gets a little less painful.

For the moment, at least.

 

(twenty-one)

"Explain one thing to me. Why did you drag yourself to the court if you've just been beaten to a pulp?"

It's been two weeks. They're sitting on Matt's bed, at home, because while he's not on bed rest, Matt is under strict orders to cut down on any taxing activities, and that apparently includes sitting at the kitchen table.

Matt drops the statement he's been reading. The preliminary hearing in the Abbott case is in three days and they have to be ready, and that means lots of late nights and reading and sitting on Matt's bed until they fall asleep on each other.

He has no words in which he could dress the dark dark fear that doesn't want to loosen its grip on him. A quiet, "Franklin," is all he says.

"Yes," Foggy says, the brilliant, brilliant Foggy. "What?"

Matt shakes his head. Nothing, it's nothing. "Nothing. It's nothing."

He drags his finger across the page he's been reading. _The security cam footage shows..._ He doesn't raise his head when Foggy plucks the sheet from his hands nor when Foggy's voice drops to a concerned whisper. "Hey. Hey, what's wrong?"

"People are hesitant to hire a lawyer named Foggy."

"True that," Foggy agrees and Matt can hear the undercurrent of laughter in his voice. "That sounds like a name of some sleazy-ass idiot who wears a cowboy hat and a bowtie and advertises himself after 11 pm."

"And as Marci said, you need me for my name."

"When did Marci... Ah." Foggy nods, remembering. "Don't worry, buddy, I need you for reasons other than your name. For example your looks, don't forget about that one."

"But," Matt makes a pathetic gesture, trying to encompass everything that is _wrong_ , here, with him, all that he broke, " _Franklin_ Nelson, Attorney at Law, doesn't need me. So I need..." 

He trails off, shrugging. It doesn't really matter, what he needs.

It takes a moment, but eventually it clicks and Foggy lets out a long, pained exhale. He sounds shaken when he speaks, and Matt can suddenly hear a sniff, wait, a _sniff_ , why, he's not crying, is _Foggy_ crying, no, oh no, Matt, you stupid, stupid, you, what have you _done_ , "oh, _Christ_. No, Matty, _no_."

 

(coda)

"I do need you," Foggy whispers vehemently into his neck, "and not just because you're smart and super useful in the courtroom with your verbal slaying skills. I need you for your passion and idealism and bravery, and for your smile and abysmal sense of humour. I've always needed you and I've always needed you for _you_."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogues and lines you do recognise were taken from Mark Waid's run, particularly Vol 3's issues #1, #16, #17.
> 
> The author would like to thank T. for beta.


End file.
